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‘This ain’t the shop for justice’ The Artful Dodger, Oliver Twist

Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape.In Oliver Twist, Dickens graphically conjures up the capital’s underworld, full of prostitutes, thieves and lost and homeless children, and gives a voice to the disadvantaged and abused.

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in financial troubles. When Dickens was twelve years old he was send to work in a shoe polish factory because his family had be taken to the debtors' prison. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals. The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836. In the same year he married the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, Catherine Hogarth. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837 while The Pickwick Papers was still running. Many other novels followed and The Old Curiosity Shop brought Dickens international fame and he became a celebrity America as well as Britain. He separated from his wife in 1858. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870, leaving his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

"The image of little Oliver Twist victimised by poverty, almost seduced by the specious excitement of crime, and then offered the possibility of a lucrative career in authorship is always compelling." --Guardian

"We leave him most reluctantly, and so will every reader who has any capacity to see and feel whatsoever is most loveable, hateful, or laughable, in the character of the everyday life about him." --Examiner

"He deals truly with human nature, which never can degrade; he takes up everything, good, bad, or indifferent, which he works up into a rich alluvial deposit. He is natural, and that never can be ridiculous." -- Quarterly Review

One of the grand masters of Victorian literature

Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, the second
of eight children. Dickens's childhood experiences were similar to
those depicted in David Copperfield. His father, who was a government
clerk, was imprisoned for debt and Dickens was briefly sent to work in
a blacking warehouse at the age of twelve.

He received little formal education, but taught himself shorthand and
became a reporter of parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle.
He began to publish sketches in various periodicals, which were
subsequently republished as Sketches by Boz. The Pickwick Papers were
published in 1836–7 and after a slow start became a publishing
phenomenon and Dickens's characters the centre of a popular cult.

Part of the secret of his success was the method of cheap serial
publication which Dickens used for all his novels. He began Oliver
Twist in 1837, followed by Nicholas Nickleby (1838) and The Old
Curiosity Shop (1840–41).After finishing Barnaby Rudge (1841) Dickens
set off for America; he went full of enthusiasm for the young republic
but, in spite of a triumphant reception, he returned disillusioned. His
experiences are recorded in American Notes (1842). Martin Chuzzlewit
(1843–4) did not repeat its predecessors' success but this was quickly
redressed by the huge popularity of the Christmas Books, of which the
first, A Christmas Carol, appeared in 1843.

During 1844–6 Dickens travelled abroad and he began Dombey and Son
while in Switzerland. This and David Copperfield (1849–50) were more
serious in theme and more carefully planned than his early novels. In
later works, such as Bleak House (1853) and Little Dorrit (1857),
Dickens's social criticism became more radical and his comedy more
savage.

In 1850 Dickens started the weekly periodical Household Words,
succeeded in 1859 by All the Year Round; in these he published Hard
Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations
(1860–61). Dickens's health was failing during the 1860s and the
physical strain of the public readings which he began in 1858 hastened
his decline, although Our Mutual Friend (1865) retained some of his
best comedy.

His last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed and he
died on 9 June 1870. Public grief at his death was considerable and he
was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

A Note on our choice

The Works of Charles Dickens are available in many different editions, published by many different publishers.

The Booktopia Book Guru has recommended the Penguin Black Classic paperback editions here, as Australian readers have had a long established relationship with the Penguin Black Classic editions, with their informative and erudite introductions and notes.

There are, however, other options (see the series tab below). Both Oxford Classics and Vintage Classics publish Dickens, with notes and introductions. As do many US publishing houses.

Wordsworth Classics publish cheaper, no frills, editions of the classics, Dickens included, but the cheapest option, for those who have don’t want to read the classics but have to in order to pass a course, the US publisher, Dover, issues a thrift edition: these are cheap and cheerful, read and discard productions, which offer nothing but the text.